Moonrise
by Regis
Summary: In the hours before Crono, Frog and their marauding band stormed the castle of Magus, the four villains begin their nightly routines. Under the light of the moon, many secrets are revealed.
1. Default Chapter

Moonrise  
  
Magus  
  
At precisely nine o'clock in the evening, Magus awoke. In a second, he was alert and ready. With a flare of magic, his bedclothes were flung aside and he floated to his feet. Another thought sent the brief purple loincloth that served for clothing in the early evening flying to his hand. Then, mind, body and spirit functioning as perfectly as always, Magus began his day. Sitting at the head of the dusty table down in the grand hall of his castle, it never occurred to Magus that he was alone. It no longer bothered him; he had not eaten breakfast, or indeed any meal, with another being in decades. He was long past such feeble human considerations. The Earthbound Ones had cared about company, and love, and compassion. They had nearly died and even when they had not they lived on the edge of starvation for it. If it had not been for the disaster they would have all perished, and the Enlightened Ones would have ruled supreme. Magus moved mechanically, letting his body look after itself while his mind focussed on his endless mantra of history. Magus took history very seriously. History was the source of all things. The Great Beast had its' origins in history. It had come from far beyond time. Maybe when he knew enough about where it had come from, he would know how to destroy it. Had Magus been capable of such a human emotion as satisfaction, the thought of the final completion of his goal would have stirred it within him. But Magus had abandoned emotion with his old life. His sister had died because emotions had ruled her mind. Fear, compassion, all the others. Magus knew his sister had been weak. Otherwise, she would have lived. He would live, and her mistakes would not be repeated. He would be ready. When the time came, and The Great Beast was confronted, he would be ready. Stepping out onto the battlements, Magus barely felt the cold wind on his lithe, well-sculpted form. He had never been bothered by heat and cold, his body could cope with them. He had only adopted the ridiculous affectation of clothing since he had taken to using minions. Fine garments had been the folly of the Enlightened Ones, the pursuit of the appearance of power over power itself. None of them had rid themselves of pride, vanity and egotism. They were weak. Magus had no time for those who gave in to weakness. And now, at last, Magus reached the end of his morning routine. For standing on the battlements of his castle, feeling the cold air on his body, his purple hair blowing in the breeze, Magus screamed. No human could scream like this. Magus had the scream of a monster. Creatures of the night, never seen by mortal eye, screamed like this when they died. For into this scream Magus poured all of the emotion he had left. His hatred, malice and anger went out of him like this. Only Magus could scream like this, for this was the scream of a man without a soul. Magus screamed like a statue, unexpected, sudden, but disturbing. Nobody, not even his closest attendants, knew about the scream. Magus kept it to himself. And when the scream had finished, and the last echoes died away, Magus was himself again - beautiful, terrible, inhuman. And he went back into the castle, to get on with his life. 


	2. Ozzie

Ozzie  
  
Those who knew Ozzie would have told you that he was a fool. Not a stupid fool, a highly intelligent, knowledgeable fool, but a fool nonetheless. And Ozzie encouraged this belief. But those who spoke about him like this, and laughed at him behind his back, would not have known him now. In his room, Ozzie had changed. Gone was the bumbling fool in the polka-dot pantaloons, and in his place stood a different being; alert, aware, poised despite his bulk. Nobody saw Ozzie like this, he made sure of it. Without the act, his cover was gone. His mission failed. His master - Ozzie broke into a cold sweat at the mere thought of him - his master betrayed. And Ozzie had seen what happened to those who disobeyed his master. But Ozzie was not going to disobey Yakra. He had been chosen for this mission for precisely that purpose. He had been trained to play his part perfectly - the fool who could talk a good plan, who could spot good commanders to do his thinking for him, and who could never do anything right when the heat was on. For nearly four years now he had been living from one day to the next, pretending to be this fictional person who had not existed until the fiend Ozzie served had sensed another, greater power arising to threaten him in his mastery of evil. And, sensing that this power was not one that could be confronted by conventional means, Yakra had decided on subterfuge. So Ozzie had gone undercover, and had been subtly foiling Magus' plans ever since. Nothing major - a botched battle here, a cult uncovered there, tiny flaws that would break apart Magus' empire when Yakra made his move. But for all of his skill, Ozzie was afraid. Afraid because his master had not made his move yet, afraid because every day he stayed like this it gradually seeped into his mind that he would somehow become what he pretended to be - foolish, bumbling, useless, doomed. He had heard rumours of some being that had kidnapped Queen Leene and been destroyed. Had that been his master? Had Ozzie's lifeline been severed? Had his life outside, the one thing that kept him going from one day to the next, been swept away? But Ozzie knew the futility of such thoughts. Yakra was all-powerful. If he was not there, then Ozzie would know for sure. But work called. Ozzie spent a few moment getting into character. With a skill that would leave the best actors speechless, he gradually changed. First went that stance, for the true Ozzie stood tall and proud, and it would never do for stupid, unfit Ozzie to be seen to even look decisive and effectual. So the shoulders slumped, the knees bent, the head went forwards until it rested almost beneath the shoulders. Next, the walk. Ozzie moved like a barely tethered balloon, light, silent. A few shambling rounds of his room had despatched the poise that had possessed him. And finally, Ozzie put on the voice. The slurred words, the thick accent, and there stood someone who could probably not spell his own name. And with the transformation complete, and all worries banished, Ozzie shuffled off to meet the brave new night. 


	3. Flea

Flea  
  
Flea stared at his reflection in the mirror as he delicately applied his make-up. The slight hint of rouge on the cheeks, lips stained crimson, eyeshadow carefully blended in shades of pink and purple, eyebrows delicately pencilled in. Everything was there. Flea was proud of his appearance; he was well aware that he was more feminine than most women and he loved it. He had based some aspects of his life around it. And very enjoyable those aspects had been. But Flea had no time to dwell on his adventurous past. For, as he so often did when he was alone, Flea was fuming. Fuming at the simple injustice of life, fuming at everybody that had scorned him. He had always been faced with prejudice - who hadn't, he reasoned, at some point or another - but he got over it. And the way he got over it was by having a good fume. Of course, it wasn't some past injustice that had forced Flea into evil. No, Flea was just an intrinsically bad person. He knew this, and was comfortable with it. It had taken him some time to work out that he was not like other people, in two ways. The first he was proud of, but the matter of being evil troubled him. It went against all his teachings. Do the right thing. Look after the underdog. Put others before yourself. He had never been able to do these things, no matter how hard he tried. He had stolen, lied and cheated, all without a hint of guilt. And that had made it all the harder; he had always felt that there was something missing from his life, and it was guilt. The force that propelled a thousand people onto the path of goodness had left him out. So, with no conscience, no concern for the fate of others and a multitude of adolescent complexes, Flea had left his foolish background behind and gone to find life. And find life he had. He had found much that was good - wealth, power, sex, the hundred-and-one other things that had served to lighten his mood and make his existence more bearable. But the best thing had been finding out that bad guys were in fact better at dealing with life than the good guys. He had deceived people, lied to them, used them and then left them when it seemed appropriate. So it had been, until he found a problem. His power. The magic had grown within him, and now it chose to break free. So, faced with a new force in his life, Flea had sought instruction. The transvestite scowled prettily as he donned his robes. Magicians! Sorcerers! Vile, liver-spotted, palsy-stricken old men. He hated them, as he had hated them on first meeting them. Their smug self-assurance, their insistence on asceticism and self-denial, their awful clothes and filthy personal hygiene. He'd followed their ways, hoping to gain power and control and get out as soon as possible, but every time he had tried to gain new knowledge there were new privations, new hardships to be endured. And after nearly three years of awful, aching chastity, he had come up with his theory. Sexual tension, he reasoned, equalled power. The strongest physical force, if denied outlet, could (in certain individuals) be released through magic. And his masters, with their stupid phallic wands and their perverted little master-apprentice rituals, had thrown him out for daring to suggest that such worldly matters could intrude into their sacred environment. Well, it hadn't. Flea smiled as he remembered the fires consuming the old stone building that shouldn't have burned but did anyway under the force of three years of his frustrated hormones. Yes, sexual tension did equal power. His smile dimmed somewhat though, as he thought of the past several months. With Magus becoming increasingly dedicated to the 'ritual' as he called it, and Slash growing even more obsessed with hurting things, Flea had been very powerful recently. He was starting to wonder whether it was worth it. 


	4. Slash

Slash  
  
As the others in the palace of Magus arose, Slash was already awake. Slash hardly ever slept any more. He was too hyped. At present, he was taking out his energy on a training dummy. Slash's skill was, as always, impeccable. Attack, dodge, riposte, press the advantage, remove left arm, remove right arm, sword in the heart, withdraw and remove head. The same old formula, the same old strokes. Faster maybe, stronger probably, still not in any way interesting. Slash glared at the dismembered dummy. It just wasn't enough somehow. It wasn't the same when they didn't fight back. Slash was still slightly baffled by this. How on earth could the threat of physical pain and the effort of avoiding it be any more fulfilling than violently dismembering somebody? It was never a thought process he had managed to complete, due in the most part to not being very bright, but he still returned to it every so often. It might be, just possibly, because things happened that he didn't expect. Except, he thought, his brow furrowing, it didn't mostly. Because there was almost nothing an enemy could do that he hadn't seen other enemies do before. Slash promptly gave up thinking and spun round, sword ready. The unfortunate minion, come to check that his master hadn't grievously injured himself out of boredom was suddenly relieved of his head. Slash watched disappointedly as the corpse collapsed onto the ground. Things were so boring round here. Especially since nobody knew where he was. When he'd been living outside, it seemed that he could barely move for people with edged weapons trying to kill him and be proclaimed the best sword fighter ever. It had been interesting in those days. Hundreds of enemies, lots of different times and places, much blood, lots of people trying to kill him. Damn, he was back there again. Slash was an uncomplicated person at heart. He had strong tastes, firmly held. He'd made plans with Ozzie, done rituals with Magus, he wasn't quite sure he knew the words for some of the things Flea had talked him into, but he had yet to find anything that quite equalled the pleasure of fighting. Slash knew that he was probably boring when he wasn't killing things. His life seemed to pretty much revolve around attacking inanimate objects and accidentally killing his own minions. It was vaguely depressing. He used to sharpen his swords regularly, until Flea had turned up and given him an in- depth psychological analysis of why men liked large swords. After a while he'd got bored of trying to hammer it into the transvestite mage's head that he liked swords because he could fight with them. It really was that simple. But Flea had kept pestering him, and after that Slash had got bored and hit him. And, for no good reason that he could think of, one thing had led to another. Finally, Slash decided to practise his ultimate combat skill. Closing his eyes, he tensed his muscles (not for any reason, but Flea had said he looked good when he did it) and concentrated on the adrenaline that was at present accounting for a good half of his blood. Slowly, but gracefully, Slash rose off the floor. It wasn't a talent he cared to use often - after all, why should he bother floating unless the enemy was really tall? But he liked to keep his hand in, as Flea had gleefully pointed out. He hadn't really understood why. Slash decided to stay in mid-air for a while. He liked it. Nothing disturbed him up there. After all, what could possibly happen?  
  
At 12:17 am, a party of adventurers led by a read-headed swordsman broke into Magus' castle. By 1:42 am, Ozzie, Flea and Slash were dead. 


End file.
